Paul Fontaine

Abstract-Expressionist, color-field painter Paul Emile Fontaine was born in 1913 in Worcester, Massachusetts to Elzear and Mary Fontaine, both of French Canadian descent. Paul Fontaine was early on encouraged to be a painter, deciding to pursue this artistic path as a teenager. He was enrolled at the Worcester Art Museum School following completion of high school and remained there from 1932-1935. Fontaine graduated in 1935 and followed his studies with a six-month term in the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1936, Fontaine worked as a Works Progress Administration (or Section of Fine Arts, US Treasury) painter in Springfield, Massachusetts, painting murals in the city’s Post Office under Umberto Romano. Like many WPA murals, these contained images of Springfield and Massachusetts history in a bold, proletarian style, full of expressive movement and hard edges. In six panels, these murals now decorate Springfield’s federal building.

Following employment as a WPA painter, Fontaine was encouraged to continue his studies at Yale’s prestigious art school. Francis H. Taylor, director of the Worcester Art Museum, secured a matching grant for Fontaine to engage further studies at Yale University, the only time the Worcester Art Museum School donated significant funds to a student’s career. Fontaine began at Yale in 1938 and graduated among the top of his class in 1940. Fontaine was awarded the Winchester Wirt Traveling Fellowship the same year, but due to wartime exigencies, chose instead to study and paint in the Caribbean.

Paul Fontaine married in 1940 and the next year, the Fontaines returned to Worcester in 1941, where Paul held a factory job and painted regularly, successfully submitting a number of watercolors for governmental tours. He also founded the Worcester Artists Group with Herbert Barnett, showed in Boston at the Grace Horn Galleries, and built a studio by hand behind his mother’s house, known as “Rocky Tor.” Paul Fontaine was drafted in 1943 and sent to Italy where he worked as an illustrator, also painting commissions for the US Army and Red Cross. Fontaine frequently painted semiabstract watercolors of the Italian countryside, maintaining his commitment to a career as an artist. The Fontaines’ first daughter, Carol, was born in 1943 in Worcester, MA. Starting in 1945, Paul worked as an Army cartographer in Paris, finally settling in Frankfurt as the graphic director for the Army’s regional headquarters. There, his work included posters and brochures. Paul stayed in this position until 1953, which allowed him the opportunity to live in Frankfurt as the city and its artistic community was rebuilt. During the late 1940s, Paul’s Italian watercolors also toured to acclaim in the United States in an exhibition organized by Virginia Fontaine that brought his work to Milwaukee and Ripon, WI; Kalamazoo, MI; Bloomington, IN; and Boston, MA. In 1948, the Fontaines’ second daughter, Eugenie (Paula), was born in Frankfurt.

The Fontaines’ apartment in Frankfurt soon became noted for its continual parade of artists, writers and musicians, for Virginia Fontaine made their home into a place where artists could meet, share ideas and get to know one another in postwar Frankfurt. Her goal was not only community building, but to introduce Paul to European artists and bring him into the artistic circle. This circle included Hans Hartung, Bauhaus painter and weaver Ida Kerkovius, sculptors Ewald Mataré and Karl Hartung, Otto Ritschl and Willi Baumeister. The Fontaines also bought and otherwise acquired a strong collection of modern and abstract European art, reflecting both status as an integral part of the art scene and contributing to the noteworthiness of the archives. In 1953, the Fontaines moved to Darmstadt, where Paul became the art director for Stars and Stripes, the Army’s European circular. Like German-American painter Lyonel Feininger, he was an accomplished cartoonist, and his caricatures and editorial art appeared in issues throughout the 1960s. This was his principal source of income until his retirement in 1969 at age 55. The Fontaines’ third daughter Claudia was born in Darmstadt in 1956. During this period, Virginia began to focus more on her own work, which included curating and photography. At the request of Gordon Gilkey, the print curator for Oregon State University at Corvallis and former Adjutant General in charge of salvaging looted European art, she single-handedly curated and procured prints for an exhibition of contemporary German prints in 1963. She was also the translator for the first definitive work on Hans Hartung published by Ottomar Domnick who was a major collector of contemporary works from that time period. In addition, she photographed and was the self-appointed publicist for the famed Mary Wigman modern dance company and opera star Bruni Falcon.

From 1947 onward, Paul Fontaine remained committed to exploring the abstract in his art, with increasingly large canvases and defiantly non-representational forms in oil, watercolor and acrylic paint, often with bold areas of color and naturalistic hues. For the next 23 years, Virginia was also committed to the success of Paul Fontaine as an artist. She steadfastly continued to introduce him to fellow artists and to curators and galleries, earning him frequent shows in Europe and, occasionally, the United States. In 1969, the Fontaines moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, following Paul Fontaine’s retirement. During his time in Mexico, the colors of his paintings became bolder, his forms gauzier and his canvases larger. He showed at the University of Colima, Jalisco, Mex. (1970) and, because he found Mexican culture more favorable, was able to represent himself to curators and galleries there. Following the death of Virginia in 1992 at age 75, Paul moved to Austin, Texas to be nearer to his daughters. He died in 1996 at age 82.

Gay Gaddis

Survival, destruction and renewal are part of everyday life in the Texas Hill Country. These elements collide in Gay Gaddis’ work through bursts of color and unexpected contrast under a vast and ever-changing sky.

Like all her endeavors, Gay’s approach to painting is both unique and unconventional. She faces fierce wind, driving rain, scorching sun and enveloping darkness to capture what she sees in the moment.

A true cowgirl at heart, Gay believes nature directly affects our thinking and actions, and as such, her Texas roots both inspire and inform her artwork. She paints from her family’s home at the Double Heart Ranch, alongside a herd of goats, cattle dogs and authentic Texas Longhorns. From driving tractors to feeding animals, Gay’s quiet life on the ranch is very different than that of her life as Founder and CEO.

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art, The University of Texas, 1977

D.K. Richardson

For thousands of years, humans have portrayed their story on cave walls, animal hides, papyrus, linen, and silk in their fundamental need to leave their legacy for a measure of historical eternity.

Influenced by masters of their craft, such as Da Vinci, Rubens, and Vermeer, Richardson continually strives to obtain an even higher level of excellence.

Richardson’s focus is Realism. Her work is a hybrid of contemporary and classical painting. The true challenge of her craft is capturing the essence of the character.

An award-winning artist, Richardson’s work has exhibited in New York City, Stockholm, Madrid, Rome, Bucharest, and Paris.

Jennifer Balkan

FROM THE ARTIST:

“Although I had drawn all my life, I didn’t embrace my passion to paint until 2001. I grew up in one of the countless suburbs of New Jersey in between the Holland Tunnel and the Jersey Shore which spawned my affection and curiosity for all things carnivalesque.

I studied behavioral neuroscience at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. After graduation, I worked my way out west to Seattle after a brief stay in Boulder where I found people not afraid to speak their minds, while I worked in a rat lab. In Seattle, I worked serving the mentally ill and developmentally disabled population. From Seattle, I was pulled to Austin to study Latin American sociology at the University of Texas. I attained my Ph.D. in 2001 after conducting anthropological fieldwork on human migration in Chiapas, Mexico in 1999. Although my experience in Mexico was rich, I longed for artistic creativity.

In 2002, I quit my full-time job doing social scientific research and threw myself into oil painting and now paint fervently. I have taken art classes at Laguna Gloria Art School, the Austin Fine Arts School and at the Art Students League in Denver. I continue to find inspiration in many innovative painters who include friends both near and far and my husband Jeff whose extraordinary grace on the guitar has taught me that strength lies in subtlety.

My greatest achievement is my son Karlo who was born in 2009. I feel incredibly lucky and constantly humbled as I get to see the world through his eyes. I now realize that my time studying the human psyche both psychologically and sociologically must have left its imprint on my brain permanently…because I cannot seem to stray too far from it in my painting.”

Tico Mendoza

Originally from Guatemala, Alejandro “Tico” Mendoza is an Austin-based photographer and designer.

His background is in graphic design and advertising, which allows him to fully understand the concepts of composition, light and space. He now applies this knowledge to his photography, where he likes to focus on portraiture, lifestyle, music, weddings and adventure travel. His true specialty is “people” and even more so when in an uncontrolled environment with natural lighting.

Kati Williams

Kati Williams is a figurative artist, born in Austin, TX in 1983. Her interests in the arts began at a young age listening to classical music with her father and later becoming a classically trained violinist. She also began sculpting and drawing figuratively at a young age, which eventually grew into an interest in the velvety surfaces and smooth glazes of Baroque paintings. Her area of focus shifted from sculpture towards oils and the painting techniques favored by the Old Masters.

She found sculptural elements in the intricate processes of layering glazes and pulling light forms out of a dark surface. Her reverence for painting and sculpture eventually led her to receiving her BA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. Since that time she has shown her work nationally including New York, NY, San Francisco, CA and Austin, TX.

Kathryn Goodnite

Kathryn Goodnite is an accomplished artist, designer and former gallery owner in Austin TX. The beauty and depth of her paintings are only matched by the range and volume of her extensive body of work. Her sheer, unadulterated sensibility seeps through every brush stroke.

“Expressionism by oneself or others creates emotion and ensures passion, which is how I feel about life and art. Art can be a conversation or a dance. Loneliness is rarely present as a painter in my mind,” the artist adds.

Goodnite’s studies began in the Hawaiian Islands in the early eighties, continuing in Bordeaux, France. Some years later, she made her way to Houston, TX, a refreshing change of pace and scenery to a vibrant urban American metropolis. “The time I spent in Houston changed my perspective and style, reshaping how I visualize and approach an abstract expression of nature.” Kathryn is unambiguously attracted to nature, as is evidenced in most of her paintings. “My love of water is present in much of my work.”

The artist spent 2015 through 2017 traveling across Asia with enormous canvases, multiple mediums and an urgency to discover. “There was much joy, but also much devastation along the way. This sharp contrast I believe surfaced in my recent abstracts.” Goodnite is proud to debut new work in 2018.

Amanda Robin Wood

“Though born in the US, I've spent most of my formative years living overseas with my parents, absorbing art and culture from the Tropics, the Middle and Far East. This unique opportunity allowed me to absorb art and culture from around the globe. Constant exposure to a wide range of religions, cultures and traditions has been an enriching foundation for me as an artist, influencing my creative work quite heavily.

Returning to the US in the mid 1980's, and settling in Texas, has added another layer to my creative style, with rich culture unique to Texas. I truly felt at home here and was quite interested in staying. Upon receiving my Bachelor's degree in Fine Art/Communication Design from the University of North Texas in 1995, I began a career as a graphic designer, which spanned many years in the Dallas area.

Several years into becoming a graphic designer, I still yearned to paint, work with clay and other sculpting materials. I wanted to create permanent artwork more likely capture the changes life brings us -- yet freeze snapshots in time, highlighting those pinnacle moments in our lives. This meant I needed to say something about the world we live in and create a more meaningful dialogue with the viewer. Following the birth of my second child, I embarked on a soul seeking journey, which resulted in the reassessing of all of my views on life, work, family and spiritual beliefs. Once I had connected with myself during this journey, I knew I needed to let go of my current self and evolve into the artist that I have become thus far.

The results of my time in self exploration are visible in my work: human emotions, manifestations of spirituality, motherhood, relationships, fear, defensiveness, self love, irreverence, conquering fear and letting go. There is also a deep appreciation for ancient wisdom and archetypal symbols that transcend generations and cultures.

Currently, I live in Austin, Texas with my husband, two daughters and two active Weimaraners. Austin’s casual attitude, accepting environment and beautiful hill country have all been key in my self development as an artist. The local community of clay artists and sculptors continues to be a positive, supportive and strong community. It has been a wonderful avenue for meeting great artists that have nurtured meover time.”

Ben Mata

Ben Mata (b. 1969, San Antonio) was raised on the Southside of San Antonio. He studied painting at Southwest Texas State University (1997-2000) and at Palo Alto College in San Antonio (1993-96). During his studies, he was a resident artist at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Annex Building.

In 2000, Mata co-founded Circle Infiniti Studios in San Antonio. Since then, he has worked on aluminum panels using artist oils and power tools to manipulate the surface. The luminous metallic surface allows him to create a variety of textures and depths. Mata claims that this allows for a process of discovery; he is led by intuitive responses to the surface which guide him in the execution of the work.

Mata has exhibited at Blue Star Contemporary Art Center; Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center; Galería Ortiz, Anarte Gallery; San Antonio,Art House Gallery, Houston; and Martinez Gallery in Troy, New York. His work has appeared in Domino Magazine (2007), Brilliant Magazine (2005), and San Antonio Magazine (2007). In addition, he has been involved in several community-based projects. In 2000 he created a mural with South San Antonio High School students, and through the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Juntos en Arte program, assisted inmates from the Comal Detention Center in the creation of a portable mural (2000).

Individual projects include a forty foot mural at Kluzos Martini Bar; San Antonio(2008) and a mural for the Mary, Mother of Priest Chapel in Rome, Italy; commissioned by Rohn and Associates Design Inc. in 2010. Mata's work is in the University of Texas at San Antonio Art Collection and many other private collections.

Brook Rosser

Brook Rosser lives in San Antonio Texas and is a painter and Professor of Communication Design at San Antonio College. Brook received her BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Texas Tech University. Brook’s paintings and drawings have been exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions as well as juried shows.

Her work has been exhibited at: AnArte Gallery, Carrington/Gallagher Gallery, Blue Star, University Autonoma de Mexico, Southwest School of Arts & Crafts, St. Mary’s University, the Lubbock Fine Arts Center, Texas Tech University, The University of Texas at Tyler, and Arizona State Universities Institute for Humanities and Research. Her work has been acquired for both private and corporate collections such as the University Hospital Health System’s Robert B. Green Research Facility in San Antonio, Texas.

Brook’s mixed media paintings seek to reflect love, challenges, and dreams, blending both private and mythic images. Her love of folk art and color is evident in her work, which constantly searches out new ways to explore the wonder and enchantment of living.

Jason Wright

Jason Wright is an artist working across a variety of media, from drawing and painting, to sculpture, video, and installation. In addition to having roots in the fine art tradition, Wright's practice is informed by a wide range of everyday and vernacular art-making traditions, and through his work, he seeks to engage directly with people from all walks of life. Jason Wright Currently resides in Southeast Michigan. In addition to making art, Wright has also taught art and art history, with a focus on self-taught and vernacular artists, at the University of Michigan.

The artwork on view here is from the artist's ongoing series of recycled works, which are composed of previously completed artworks that have been reduced to fragments, and remade into new compositions. These works are meditative reflections on creativity, transformation, and time, through which the artist engages with his work as an open ended process of re-vision. By incorporating work from the past into new works, the artist folds together past and future into an holistic and meditative practice of the creative present.

Lucy Peveto

Lucy Peveto is an attorney turned artist who seeks to show how lives can be transformed utilizing the butterfly. Butterflies represent her own life experience: the connection between creativity, emotion and spirituality. Utilizing mixed mediums, Peveto celebrates the assurance that we can be born again through grace and the beauty of natural transformation. She seeks to show the infinite possibilities gained when we discover our God given talents. The process involves construction of wood panels, high heat and resin chemicals. Many times these elements are juxtaposed with delicate, paper-thin butterfly wings to illustrate the fragility of physical life. In other work, the artist seeks to deconstruct textile-inspired patterns to represent how we may find unexpected light and shadow in life and art.

Her work has been selected for private collections locally as well as internationally; public collections include the University Health System, University Hospital,UTSA Collection, La Cantera Resort and Spa, and GFR Development Services; and for future publication in the Junior League of San Antonio's "Fresh Flavors" cookbook.

Peveto's work was featured at Art to the Power of Ten, sponsored by McNay Contemporary Collectors Forum; Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum Red Dot; Southwest School of Art ROYGBIV (catalogue); AnArte Gallery Touch The Sun, Kiss The Sky (solo); Neiman Marcus, Spring Trends (solo) and in many other shows and galleries across Texas, Florida, Arizona and New Mexico.

She currently resides in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and two children.

Fabian Laniez

Fabian is a Spanish artist and designer. I studied and acquired a degree in Art and Design at the Escola Massana in Barcelona in 1987.

In 2010 I created TRYFASIC. SC a design company, we worked for private customers in Nize, Cannes, Paris, Jordanie, Moscow and Barcelona, and also participate in different fairs: Maison&Objet, Paris 2010 Maison&Objet, Paris 2011

Blaine Bowers

Blaine realized at a very young age that he had a hidden talent for being creative and unique with an eye for detail. Later in life becoming an entrepreneur ranging from a construction business to a scuba diving shop owner on a small island in the Caribbean. Through life’s paths he found an avenue for the construction skill set and the love of the tropics to create his original pieces. He uses an unconventional medium of drywall and drywall mud to create a 3D form of art to show the beauty of the world through his prospective.

Specializing in custom installs for home decor. Blaine is able to work with visions or memorable moments to create an original piece of art.

Blaine Bowers' work is represented exclusively by Submerge in and out of Austin. Please make an appointment to come see his work in our space. We'd love to show you his intricate artwork.

Joyce Dibona

(BIO COMING SOON)

Joyce Dibona's work is represented exclusively by Submerge in and out of Austin. Please make an appointment to come see her work in our space. We'd love to show you her mesmerizing art.

FR Bonnin

Bonnin lives and works in Puerto Rico, a place of rich colors and breathtaking landscapes that stimulates and provides great context to his vibrant artwork. From an early age, he began to show great interest and curiosity for the arts, as photography, drawing, and cinema fascinated. This vocation to design led him to study architecture at the California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, California.

In the 80s, the artist collided with diverse cultural and experimental movements in the west coast and then, in 1991, began his studies in Vico Morcote, Switzerland, where he was exposed directly to a fierce, new culture and intensely studied the cubist architecture of the former Czech Republic. This was a defining moment, as the area’s urban architectural environment of painting, sculpture and drawing set forth a permanent footprint in his aesthetic viewpoint.

He then returned to Puerto Rico as a graduate architect, working in a number of large-scale projects with his brother Javier in Bonnin Orozco Arquitectos. In his continuous desire for experimentation and in the search for greater freedom of expression, he begins to paint. An accomplished architect and designer, Bonnin has honed impressive design skills through his professional craft, and brings a highly educated and methodical approach to his artwork, combining geometry, proportion, balance, and perspective in ways that only an architectural visionary can. Meanwhile, his wild imagination and charismatic personality are clearly present on the canvas, producing impressive grand-scale works that mesmerize and stimulate. Each canvas – whether 2′ or 10′ wide – is transformed into a new scene of wonder and depth, where viewers can explore another dimension of sights (and even sounds) and go with him on a ride of layers, colors, and texture. Although he mostly works with oil on acrylic, his work consists of a constant exploration of technique, texture and varied approaches to his medium.